I hear so much about forgiveness,
but how to forgive and not to let other people to keep us hurting over and over
again. I used to blindly believe in another chances and kept forgiving everyone
everything. I did feel good about it but unfortunately some of these people had
a disastrous effect on my life. I surely have better things to do than being
angry about it but I do need to protect myself. So now, I believe that forgiveness
is not only about letting go of the hatred but also about making a right
decision about giving another chance.
Letting go of hatred
I do not hate people for their
mistakes because I believe that we all have our faults and do mistakes now and
then. Sometimes, we don’t even realise that what we do is not the best thing to
be doing if we want to avoid the consequences. Not only that, if we create bad
habits, it does take a while to change them. So our hatred will not only make
us miserable but it might not even make the person to change or apologise
because it’s up to them to decide what they want to do.
There’s no use to get angry at anyone, if it’s wrong what they’re doing and
they don’t fix it, they will face the consequences – at least, more and more
people might walk away from them.
Giving another chance
Now, I believe that people that do
deserve another chance are only the ones that are truly sorry and admit that it
is wrong what they’ve done. They feel really sad about it. If they keep coming
up with excuses, it’s very likely they will never stop doing it. Also, if we
decide to give someone another chance, it’s very likely that we have to do it
number of times before that person can change the habit (see Habits).
So we might have to give them number of chances rather than just a second
chance depending on how strong is the habit they’re trying to change. It is
still important that they feel bad about repeating it and they do apologise
again.
I also believe that the person that
deserves my forgiveness is the person that loves me. They love me because they
care about me and all they want from me is to be happy (see Happiness).
I just want to fully understand their reasons for their actions and I also
expect them to understand my position. We can always work together to make sure
that we don’t take each others happiness away without a very good reason.
And if people that hurt me don’t feel bad about
what they’ve done or I can’t handle being hurt by them again, I just keep a
distance from them to make sure that they can’t do any more damage to my life.
